World

Silk Road Reborn: There's a New Dread Pirate Roberts

Five weeks after the FBI shuttered what it called "the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet" and arrested its suspected owner, a new online bazaar for drugs and other contraband has arisen from the ashes bearing the same name — Silk Road.

That's not the only similarity, though. The website's owner is fashioning himself as the "Dread Pirate Roberts," a reference to the book and film The Princess Bride, which the owner of the original Silk Road also used.

We've communicated with the new Dread Pirate Roberts (DPR) throughout the past month, using encrypted messaging on the new Silk Road's forums. Though the marketplace launched Wednesday, the new site's forums have been active since Oct. 7 — an attempt by the new Dread Pirate Roberts to hold together the massive Silk Road community, keep its members from going to competitors and engage them in the process of reinventing the site.

The new Dread Pirate Roberts agreed to answer select questions about the new site — an interview DPR said to be exclusive to Mashable. We don't know this person's real name, location, age, gender or that there aren't multiple people behind the digital black mask. The new Dread Pirate Roberts could be anyone. The new Silk Road could be a well-orchestrated scam; the new Dread Pirate Roberts could be the old Dread Pirate Roberts, though he or she insists that's not the case.

For the purposes of this story, we will refer to the new DPR as a solitary male. And much like his cinematic namesake — the farm boy Westley turned genial swashbuckler — the new Roberts inherited the moniker.

"The Dread Pirate Roberts is more a title than a name," he writes in a private message. "It may be passed from person to person as each must step into the role, whether voluntarily or out of necessity."

The FBI shut down the original Silk Road online marketplace and arrested its suspected owner, Ross William Ulbricht, on Oct. 1. Eight people accused of selling drugs on Silk Road were arrested in the weeks after the site was closed. Aside from charges related to drugs and money laundering, Ulbricht is also accused of ordering murder-for-hire on two separate occasions, one of which was set up by the FBI.

While you might expect everyone involved with the site to be in hiding, that's not the case. The Silk Road community, which is still intact, got wind of the site's impending rebirth after the new DPR posted a welcome message on the new site's forums on Oct. 7.

As everyone is now aware, the previous Silk Road has fallen. For law enforcement worldwide this was a small victory for them where they would receive a pat on the back from their superiors and maybe a good christmas bonus coming up for them. However, what law enforcement has failed to understand is the consequences of their actions.

Silk Road is not one man. Silk Road is an idea, and where Silk Road now lies is in the people who made it what it was and it is those people who will, with a little help, bring the idea back to life again under a new name.

The news quickly reached many of the venues former Silk Road users frequented for information, starting with the old Silk Road's forums. "Libertas," a "global moderator" on the original Silk Road, triumphantly announced the news of the new site in a post titled "We rise again!"

In addition to Libertas, who is an employee of the new Silk Road, former Silk Road vendor "StExo," who earned the community's trust by investigating and exposing scammers, has also endorsed the new Silk Road.

Libertas declined to comment for this story, and StExo, who has since disappeared from the forums altogether, did not reply to our inquiry.

On the forums, there's a tone of skeptical optimism regarding the new DPR. Earning endorsements from trusted members of the Silk Road community has gone a long way. Reputation is key on sites like Silk Road. In a world where everyone is anonymous, the only way to develop trust is through peer feedback — much like with seller ratings on eBay or Yelp.

"Several well known users of Silk Road who can be seen as pillars of trust are aware of my previous identity so they may conclude for themselves whether or not to trust me," DPR writes. "These are people both I and the community feel they can trust to make sound judgement on the matter."

Roberts himself is presumed to have been an active member of the original Silk Road. Based on his forum posts and our private communications, the new Roberts matches his predecessor in portraying Silk Road as a sort of libertarian utopia rather than a black market in the darkest corner of the web. He also has the same flare for symbolism.

Though it was eventually delayed by 24 hours, the initial planned launch time for the site was 4:20 p.m. UTC on Nov. 5 — Guy Fawkes Day. The graphic novel and subsequent film V for Vendetta helped popularize Fawkes, whose iconic mask has become a symbol of anti-establishment movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the online activist group Anonymous. "Remember, remember the fifth of November," starts the English folk poem about Fawkes' foiled attempt to blow up the British parliament in 1605.

The new DPR, however, is going to need more than just rhetoric and symbolism to avoid legal retribution and restore Silk Road to its former state.

The Competition

While the original Silk Road had competition in name only, the new Silk Road will need to distinguish itself from an expanding horde of existing marketplaces and upstarts, all looking to become the next online drug empire.

BlackMarket Reloaded (BMR) and Sheep Marketplace are the two most well-known sites. BMR, which the new Roberts calls Silk Road's only true competition, recently closed "indefinitely" due to a security scare but then reopened the very next day. The site launched in 2011.

The new DPR calls the administrators of Sheep Marketplace "compromised amateurs" because the site has experienced security problems due to the increase in traffic in the wake of Silk Road's collapse.

Project: Black Flag was initially also called Silk Road when it launched its open beta on Oct. 13. The site's owner, "Metta Dread Pirate Roberts," designed it to look exactly like Silk Road. But in a forum post titled "Never Trust a Pirate" on Oct. 28, Metta DPR announced he was closing Project: Black Flag and stealing all the Bitcoin users had deposited.

"I was unable to cope with the stress and constant demand, so I panicked," reads an Oct. 28 post on by Metta DPR on Project: Black Flag's forums. "I am sorry for my actions, but with the funds I gathered from the site, I will be able to keep myself from being homeless for the next several months."

On the day Project: Black Flag launched, the new Roberts told us he had communicated with Metta DPR, and that he expected the sites to be competitors. After Project: Black Flag failed, he posted the following message to the new Silk Road's forums.

Then, there are Deepbay, Drug Market, Brain Magic, Budster and who knows how many other sites vying for legitimacy.

There's a lot at stake for these sites. The original Silk Road facilitated $1.2 billion worth of transactions and collected $80 million in commission fees in less than three years, according to FBI documents.

Even playing second fiddle to the original Silk Road, BMR hasn't done so badly for itself if you believe the site's owner, "backopy." In an April 30 BMR forum post, backopy released the following chart, supposedly detailing the growth of BMR's trade volume (in dollars).

In terms of scale, there are more than 110,000 users registered for the original Silk Road's forums. Even after siphoning off some of the original Silk Road's users, BMR currently has about 23,000 registered users on its forums. The newly formed Silk Road has picked up 3,100 users in its four weeks in existence. Number of forum registrants isn't an exact indicator of the true magnitude of the operation, however, as FBI documents state that the original Silk Road had more than 150,000 unique accounts — 146,946 buyers and 3,877 vendors.

"The role of Dread Pirate Roberts is not something an individual may simply place upon themselves, it runs far deeper than that," DPR writes. "I could call myself Dread Pirate Roberts and publish my works, but that title value is only realized when the Silk Road community is happy for you to use it, as in my case thus far."

The new DPR knows the key to maintaining this confidence and winning over skeptics is to protect the community from law enforcement, cyber attacks, rogue users and all other threats. In a post on the site's forums, he wrote, "I have taken steps the previous Dread Pirate Roberts wouldn't have even thought of so you may rest assured, you are in the hands of a technically competent expert."

Despite his confidence, DPR told us that he can make no hard and fast promises because a large part of users' security depends on their taking the proper steps to safeguard their identities.

Like the old Silk Road, the new marketplace can only be accessed through Tor, software that allows for anonymous Internet browsing. Transactions are conducted with Bitcoin, a digital currency that is extremely difficult to track. Users are encouraged to communicate using encryption.

On the old Silk Road, vendors shipped product through postal services. They used an array of creative tactics to make the packages inconspicuous, such as vacuum sealing the drugs and shipping them with redolent objects such as boxes of scented magic markers, according to court documents. The FBI criminal complaint against Ulbricht also said the Silk Road "Buyer's Guide" instructed users to "use a different address" such as a friend's house or P.O. box. for shipping.

In terms of security, the new DPR may even have some new tricks up his sleeve.

"There is more to add to how we will change the next Silk Road, but in order to stay ahead of the game we consider these trade secrets in security," he writes.

Walking the Road

It's possible the new Silk Road could be gone by the time you finish reading this sentence. The site's administrators could also learn from their predecessor's mistakes and stay ahead of law enforcement for years and years.

"Our market is focused on higher security standards," DPR writes. "We already have the team working around the clock on our market."

Roberts has carefully selected this team by invitation only. An application process "draws in the wrong type of people," and doesn't give him the opportunity to properly vet his potential employees.

"New staff I have taken on are not people who have just come around, they are always people I have watched long-term," DPR writes.

Employees of the old Silk Road earned between $1,000 and $2,000 each month, according to FBI documents. All the new Roberts would say about his employees pay is that they would earn an amount that "is consistent with the risk they are taking," and that it would be a full-time job for most of them.

While Roberts says he knows the real-life identities of his staff members, he insists absolutely no one can know his true identity for the safety of the community: "A two way exchange is bad for security as every risk I face is also a risk to the entire market and users."

Each question we asked that would even hint at Robert's true identity or former Silk Road alias was met with a mechanical refrain — "No comment. Profiling information." That includes questions about gender, background, whether or not running Silk Road will be his full-time job and when he decided to attempt to become the new Dread Pirate Roberts.

One thing we can say is that the new DPR is confident and ambitious. He writes that he's not worried about undercover agents: "If law enforcement decide to send an informant my way, I will not be fooled." And in a recent post to the site's forums, he discussed his goals.

"If we do not double the achievements of the first Silk Road, I would be extremely disappointed with myself," reads the Oct. 18 forum post.

One aspect of the old Silk Road Roberts plans to mimic, however, is its self-imposed limits on what the site will sell.

"As in the original market, we plan only to take the high road, that being nothing which intends to cause harm to another person," Roberts writes. "Therefore weapons and assassinations contracts (which are both major scams anyway) are prohibited, just as child pornography."

He did not say specifically that he was opposed to taking extreme measures to protect his site. Ross Ulbricht, the alleged previous "Dread Pirate Roberts," is accused by the FBI of twice soliciting murder-for-hire to protect his users' identities and to silence someone who was trying to blackmail him.

"I am prepared to take whatever actions necessary to protect myself, my users and my staff," the new Roberts writes. "There are a wider variety of tools at our disposal than the so called murder-for-hire contracts, [tools] which are more peaceful and more effective."

He would not elaborate on these tools, but he acknowledges that the Silk Road community at large expects him to act in its best interest.

As of last week, the new Silk Road team had enlisted about 172 vendors from the original Silk Road, with scores more trying to get in the door. To get approved, vendors had to sign a dated message with a PGP encryption key known to the former Silk Road or post a $200 bond to be returned once the vendor proves to be legitimate.

This process supposedly protects against scammers pretending to be trusted vendors from the old Silk Road. What it does not protect against is a vendor cooperating with law enforcement. Silk Road's one-time heroin kingpin, "NOD," whose real-life identity is believed to be Seattle-area resident Steven Sadler, worked with the FBI for two months before the fall of Silk Road, according to a recent report by The Smoking Gun.

"Some vendors are signing plea bargains to continue vending to set up other vendors, which has us all on edge right now," Roberts wrote, in a message sent to us on the same day the story about Sadler broke.

Despite being on edge, he wrote that he planned to deal with these cooperating dealers, claiming he was able to identify them with help from his informants inside law enforcement. Three days later, he wrote that the cooperating dealers "have been handled," though he would not give any further details.

Though the marketplace is up and running, no drugs will change hands for the next few days. Roberts has planned a four-day roll out, with the site reaching its full functionality on Nov. 9. At first glance, the new site looks nearly identical to the original. Here's a screengrab of the new Silk Road taken Wednesday.

He was initially coy when we asked about fees, but Roberts later posted to the forums a fee structure resembling the original Silk Road's. The site will collect between 4% and 8%, depending on the size of the transaction.

Roberts says his goal is to charge enough to keep the site running plus a "small remuneration" for himself and his staff. While it's probably safe to assume Roberts wouldn't risk a lengthy prison sentence for anything less than a small fortune, when it comes to the specter of law enforcement, he certainly does not balk.

"Afraid? I am not afraid," he writes. "I'd rather get caught tomorrow and spend the rest of my life in a prison cell than continue to just be another man or woman on the street. I want people to look back and remember every Dread Pirate Roberts there is and know we did something different, we didn't stop what we were doing just because our government wants us to stop, we were willing to fight for our cause risking everything we ever worked for."

The Road Ahead

Whether it's law enforcement, retirement or selling the site, the new DPR says he knows he can't go on forever.

"When I am gone, there will be another Dread Pirate Roberts and another Silk Road," he says. "Maybe one day, every government in the world will recognize that you can capture a person and lock them up, but you can never kill the idea driving it."

Vendor "Angelina," who was closing in on 10,000 transactions on the original Silk Road before it went down, shares this sentiment. Since Silk Road closed, Angelina has not gone into hiding but rather opened up shop on a number of different sites. She says her customers have followed.

"The shutdown of Silk Road and the instantaneous rise of several new sites has taught us that the market is an idea, not a particular web address," Angelina tells Mashable. "The shutdown has also demonstrated that the security measures being used are mostly working and where they might have fallen short, improvements are in the works."

Angelina says she will sell her products — generic Viagra and Levitra, as well as Propranolol and THC lollipops — on the new Silk Road if it meets her standards for security.

She may be glad to hear that the new Roberts has a plan to make sure that there's always a Silk Road for her and other vendors and buyers to use. For each secure version of the new Silk Road, Roberts plans to store the site's source code in an "encrypted container," in case he gets caught.

"I need only speak the encryption key and they will have hundreds of new markets open for development," he writes. "Sure, this method will only prove I am the Dread Pirate Roberts in court, but as I said, I am not afraid of standing up for what I believe in, whatever the cost may be."

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